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It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

Circus Galop sounds like something you'd hear in a silent movie, although some of the most repetivie parts like at 1:00 and likewise get a little annoying sometimes... Plus, the ending doesn't do it well for me.

But my favorite part is the recapitulation at 2:57 with all the glissandi going among the main theme.

The video looks like what happens when I play around in Sibelius and don't take the time to alter the tempo or anything I've done, for that matter! Then just hit PLAY heh heh. I once had someone convinced that my random note-throwing and mouse-clicking was some modern piece of art music by some obscure composer. I didn't have the heart to tell them the truth after they started looking at the piece and commenting on it's 'dense construction' and it's 'modern rejection of traditional musical values' and on and on and on. And this was after they listened to it being performed by Sibelius's cold, calculating robot sensibilities.

It just goes to show ya' how some people can easily be swayed by the majority of modern music's claim to profoundness. Schoenberg once said he envisioned Grocer's boys whistling his tunes, once the initial shock of his new system was overcome, comparing his music to the radicalness of Beethoven's. Well, Arnold - you were wrong: nobody whistles your 'music' and the passage of time hasn't sufficently warped many people's musical tastes to accomodate yours'. >:)

Well I have this gorgeous CD of Lucia Popp singing the op.2 songs, and I've found myself whistling those!

Yes, and I've caught myself whistling or humming Pierrot, the third quartet, and the stunning song Herzgewächse. No need to gleefully disparage what you happen not to like.

-J

We'll have to reserve this for another thread - (I didn't realize there were still Arnold fans around who would take offense at my agreeing with the verdict of musical history), and there's a lot that could be said about classical music, audience appreciation and the test of time being applied to composers. We'll place some of the serialists next to their revolutionary predecessors and see whose music had more of an impact in the long run. I gleefully disparage with good reasons, not just because I do not like the music on a personal level. But anyways....that's all I'll say on it in this thread. My intention was not to derail anything.

No problem, Mattardo. (Although I naturally object to your use of the word "still" in "still Arnold fans", as if the Schoenberg fans are dropping out like flies as we realize the emperor has no clothes, and I certainly disagree with your interpretation of the "verdict of musical history". As you say, another conversation, although I don't know how interesting or fruitful it would prove. )

As for the Hamelin piece, it's apparently written for two player pianos, I'd guess in tribute to Conlon Nancarrow, whose life-work is a set of ~50 rhythmic studies for player piano, each painstakingly punched on a player piano roll, collectively exploring the limits of the physically possible and aurally perceptible.

I think I get it. Recall the comments he made in his interview.. how people are always pushing him to play music that is stupidly hard, just because no one else can, even though it's musically worthless. Like Mereaux Etudes. I think this is a piece to satisfy (or troll?) those kinds of people.